If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you thereWritten by Julia McDaid
What do you want to achieve? Before you actually set up, decide what you want to achieve with your business. If you are already in business, review where you are going – are you clear about this?Why not take some time out to think about and write down your goals for your business? Write it down Research shows that only 3% of people write down their goals, and on average these people earn 10 times those who don’t have goals. Plus research shows that people with up to date written goals are as much as 3100% more successful than people who do not have up to date written goals. And make sure your business goals don’t conflict with things you want to do personally. When you are thinking about your goals, think about and write down your personal goals too. And if you are a multi owner business you will obviously need to discuss your responses with your colleagues, and agree on a shared set of goals for business. SMART goals Make sure that goals you write are SMART. What does this mean? It stands for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Timed Apply these five measures to each of your goals. What does it mean to you in reality? Once you have written down your goal as a SMART goal, think about what effects would be if you didn’t achieve itl. What is “pain” that you and those you love will experience if you don’t achieve your goal, ie ill health, poverty, unhappiness etc. (Why do this? Because recognising this pain is an enormous motivating force that will help you to work even harder to make sure you don’t fail!) Then decide what you will gain when you succeed - ie wealth, health, happiness, a prosperous retirement etc. What will you see, hear and feel? And what else will your success allow you to achieve/do? And finally write down key things you will need in order to achieve your goal. For example, it could be new resources, contacts, skills, actions etc. Repeat this process using a new sheet for every single goal you would like to achieve. Prioritise Next try and prioritise goals you have written. Lay out all of your goals in front of you and decide which are most important to you, which are less important and which (if any) are, on reflection, not important after all.
| | Unfair Competition and Abuse of PowerWritten by Sharon Housley
Last summer, rumors were abound that an employee of Tucows was using Tucows statistical information in order to determine which products produced highest return on investment, with intent to clone them and create competitive products. While not illegal, it is definitely questionable from an ethical standpoint. No real proof existed, so what can be said. It was nothing more than a rumor. An article cannot be written based on rumors. What facts do we know? According to State of Michigan corporate records Alto Software, Inc. is owned by a Tucows employee. Alto Software's two products Alto Block All and Alto Memory Booster were posted on Tucows. Both products have high download counts and held top download positions from November 2003 to February 2004. In order for Alto Software to maintain top positions throughout holiday season they would had to have spent thousands of dollars in advertising dollars. Abuse of Power Abuse of power sounds pretty absolute, unfortunately that line isn't as clear as one would think. It appears that ad spots held by Alto Software were provided free of charge. Free advertising, while possibly an employment perk, and not of itself bad, resulted in cost per click to increase significantly for other developers in those categories. In order for Alto Software to maintain their top position, cost per click was raised from $ .04 per click to more than $ .40 per click from November to January. Alto Software increased cost per click, in order to maintain top position, but were never required to pay for clicks. This forced other developers wishing to remain in a top listing to pay significantly more for each click. The handful of developers bidding on keywords and categories were forced to spend significantly more money each month, in order to maintain their position and compete against Alto Software's products. A software promotion company (softwarepromoting.com) that appears to be a subdivision of Alto Software, guaranteed listings on Tucows.com. Softwarepromoting.com's website even went so far to say, that software promoted using their services was exempt from Tucows removal process. Competing submission services were unable to provide these guarantees. The legitimacy of Alto's promotion service also requires close scrutiny. Alto Software clearly had an unfair advantage over their competitors. It would appear that a Tucows employee personally profited from their position at Tucows. There is a fine line between breaking ethical rules and using your unique position to make a profit. It appears that line was clearly crossed.
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